The Berkeley City Council and Board of Library Trustees will meet in a special closed session on Wednesday, June 7, to consider threatened litigation by attorney Jonathan Siegel on behalf of Library Director Jackie Griffin. This announcement was received by the Planet at 5:41 a.m. on June 6, too late to include in our Tuesday edition. The meeting will be held at 5 p.m. in the sixth floor Conference Room, 2180 Milvia St. The meeting will begin with a Public Comment Session. -more-

The Berkeley City Council last month asked for the city’s Fair Campaign Practices Commission to analyze a proposal to place public financing for the mayor’s office on the November ballot. But the council directive has been stalled by City Attorney Manuela Albuquerque, who says her office has insufficient time to prepare the ballot measure. -more-

Christina Paniagua’s daughter, a fifth-grader at Jefferson Elementary School in Oakland, needed extra help with reading, so Paniagua attended a school fair to find out about free private tutoring services available on-campus. -more-

A small revision of the city’s Landmarks Preservation Ordinance (LPO) appears headed to the November ballot: supporters turned in 3,200 signatures on Monday. -more-

Although Berkeley voters called for Instant Runoff Voting when they passed Measure I in March 2004 by 72 percent, IRV will not happen in 2006, according to City Clerk Sara Cox. -more-

The annual senior streaking tradition at Berkeley High School nearly went awry Monday when students descended upon the school ready to flaunt skin, only to find out the doors were locked. -more-

UC Berkeley’s plans for a high-rise hotel and conference center in downtown Berkeley are moving closer to reality, a university official said Monday. -more-

The Berkeley Board of Education is expected to finalize language Wednesday for a renewed parcel tax measure that would supply Berkeley schools with an estimated $19.6 million a year. -more-

The Zoning Adjustments Board (ZAB) is slated to reconsider a use permit for a vacant site on University Avenue that allows Toyota of Berkeley to operate an automobile sales and service facility. -more-

The committee helping formulate the new downtown plan will hold a joint meeting with the city Transportation Commission Wednesday. -more-

Disabled People Outside Project activist Dan McMullen was informed last week that he could either pay $10,000 in bail money or face arrest for violating an earlier probation by getting arrested at People’s Park on April 30. -more-

KABUL, Afghanistan—I am writing this in my apartment in one of the “posh” new buildings constructed in 2004 near downtown Kabul. The shiny structure is five stories tall with tinted windows. My roommate and I pay $300 a month in rent, the going price in such buildings. Few locals can afford such relative luxury—a civil servant's salary is just $50 a month. And this is no Trump Towers. -more-

Berkeley City Clerk Sara Cox said that if voters’ names do not appear on the voters’ list at the polling place where they believe they are registered, they have the right to ask for a provisional ballot. -more-

Candidates for office in Berkeley are required to pay a $150 filing fee when they take out nomination papers. However, in lieu of paying the fee, they can collect signatures. -more-

Rape suspect arrested -more-

The good news is that Telegraph Avenue and the Southside commercial district are doing just fine. -more-

Three quarters of the miseries and misunderstandings in the world would finish if people were to put on the shoes of their adversaries and understood their point of view. -more-

Unless you’ve been living in a cave since 1979, you have undoubtedly seen the Mad Bluebird. It was captured by aspiring wildlife photographer Michael L. Smith on a cold February day in Maryland. The subject, a male eastern bluebird, feathers fluffed out, sits on a fence post glowering at the camera. The Mad Bluebird has been very good to Smith, enabling him to quit his day job as an electrician. Over 100,000 signed prints have been sold, and the image appears on calendars, coffee mugs, and all kinds of tchatchkes. The royalties by now must be considerable. -more-

UC Berkeley’s Memorial Stadium joined the ranks of Berkeley’s landmarks Thursday by a unanimous vote of the Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC). -more-

BEARING -more-

Last Wednesday night, I went to the school board’s public hearing to express my concern about how the superintendent’s proposed new parcel tax of over $19 million would be spent. -more-

Fifty years ago, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, and public transportation, more specifically buses, became the stage from which the civil-rights movement was launched. The paradox is that today discrimination is alive and well in mass-transit bus service. In the Bay Area, for instance, a federal civil-rights lawsuit is pending in the U.S. District Court in San Francisco, charging that the Bay Area’s Metropolitan Transportation Commission (which plans and allocates the majority of funding for the area’s transit needs) supports a “separate and unequal transit system” that discriminates against poor transit riders of color. -more-

It is possible to build housing at Ashby BART to create a sizable neighborhood park, and to make the neighborhood more livable. Let me describe what could be done in a sketchy way, using approximate numbers. -more-